Writing

Step One: If you have enough space and time, the best thing to do is turn all your pieces out onto the table.  Once out turn them over so that feelings are facing up towards you.  While doing this look out for the edges and separate them if you find them.

Step two: Collect your edge pieces and put them together. This gives you the basis for the design and approximately where things go. Some edge pieces can be difficult to connect especially if it has lots of dark colors. So as long as the edges have at least three connecting pieces your good. The goal is to have all the edges connecting and making your love, life, and possibility shape but do not worry if it is not completed.

Step three: Look through the pieces and find the pieces that have basic understanding and likeness on them. Put them to the side and start connecting them. Doing this step will actually put almost the entire puzzle together for you, it also gives a starting point. Another way to do this is to look at the picture on the box, find something you want to put together, say the boat, and find all the pieces to the mailbox and put those together.

Step four: After you are done or during the process of step three make sure to put the finished or connected pieces inside your edges.  This allows one to put the pieces in the right location so it matches up with the boxes picture.

Step five: When you have gone as far as you can with the steps, start taking the non connected pieces and try to put them where they belong until it is completed.

 

 

I haven’t posted in two years. It seems like yesterday I had Amy Winehouse blasting while staring at the sun on 724 A E Wright Street. So much life has happened in 2 years. Currently, I am in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am in my final week of a 6 1/2 month stint of being a Records Manager/Archivist for the DOI. They’ve put me up quite nicely at the Aston Executive Center in the heart of downtown. It’s a nice break from the bunkhouse and heavy crowds that year-round tourism brings to Waikiki. It’s 730pm and I’m starving. I can’t decide what I want to eat. Perhaps I’ll give the mango chicken wings from Fresh Cafe another try. Although, I swore them off after I placed a call in order last week and when I arrived they were ice-cold. Booo. I have a Aloha Pineapple Smoothie from Jamba Juice, 3 Wildblue Blueberry Beers, Peanut Butter from Wholefoods, Apple Jelly, Wheat Bread, Roasted Pine Nut Hummus, and Carrots in the fridge…. I’m sure somewhere in that mix, I can piece together a decent meal.

My mood is peaceful. My solitude, this solitude was/is much needed. It’s allowed me time to make snow angels of my thoughts. I’m not sure what that means, but it gives you a visual of how i’ve been dealing with my reflections. Earlier in the evening  I sat in the tub and Facetimed Shardé. She clowned me about coming home from work and taking a bubble bath. For the record, I didnt have bubbles!  She listened to me vent about work. We talked about the absurdity of Billboard leaving Tupac off it’s Top 10 Best Rappers of All Time List. In the great debate of hip-hop, I’m a Pac fan and she’s a Biggie Fan. All in all, we both agreed he should be on the list. Then we sat in silence a bit. I got pruney and she was visibly sleepy, so I let her go. I drained the water and showered. I put on J.Coles Rise Above. I love that song. I stood directly under the shower head, for my sanity I need that baptismal feeling each and every time. This time next week I’ll be a on 9 hour flight home. I will not miss this 5 hour time difference between Honolulu and Milwaukee. I look forward to being closer to Shardé. She’s absolutely my favorite hue of yellow.

So Life. I’m still a nomad. New places and adventures still excite me. My life still has meaning. That’s important. Everyday I beat myself up for not writing, more. I initially said to myself I’d start back writing for the New Year, as a resolution of sorts, but there’s no time like the present. So here I am. Listening to TREEHOME 95 on repeat, and writing. It feels good. I am still learning about myself. Curiosity of self is important. If you don’t find you interesting, who will? I still miss my mom.I STILL NEED MY MOM. That feeling won’t ever go away. I still make my voice sweet like candy when I’m talkin’ to my Granny. I still am in love with music, and poetry, and art, and sunflowers, and books, and people watching. James Baldwin is still my idol, and Jimi Hendrix is still beautiful to me. I’m still striving to be a revolutionary and less reactionary, because Assata say’s so. I’m still pure in my intent. I am still a minimalist. I am still writing the clockwatchers. I promise to finish within the next few months.

SO, what’s new? I’m learning to be less stubborn and more open with with my feelings.  I’m investing more time in loving those people who love me. I am more attentive to the spoken an unspoken needs of friends and loved ones. I apologize more, and am putting forth effort to shut down less.  My family has expanded.  I have a puppy, and a partner who loves the Boston Celtics as much as me. I have a niece who is cute as Stevie Wonder music. I’m practicing patience. I’m learning to speak with love.  I’m enjoying living one day at a time. I’m reading more (I’m almost done with Nigger by Dick Gregory, great read). I’m trusting 300% in my creativity. I am believing of and in a higher power that I cannot see or feel. I am vowing to live and love organically and responsibly, while I still have life to live…..I’m still me, and that’s alright[.]

-JCNI

 

The world is so quiet. The light from the sun is bouncing off my mahogany wood floors, casting a golden brown everywhere, it’s beautiful. I lit my Nag Champa incense, and turned on my iPod dock, and now Amy Winehouse’s Frank album is occupying every space of my home. I don’t mind, even if the neighbors do. I fell asleep with James, Robert, Mahatma, and Muhammad watching over me, and I made it through another night. I woke up, thinking of my Mother. I miss her so much my body aches. I’d like to think she lives in the Sun, which in her physical absence, is my absolute favorite thing. I thought about my vulnerability, and my growth that has stemmed from it. How I’m discovering so much about myself; always cautious to not re-create, yet reform. I love me for everything I am, that of which I am not, and all that I aspire to be. I would write more, however, Henry David Thoreau once said “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live..” so i’ll enjoy all this sunday morning has to offer, forget about the dominion technology has over my life, and roam. Peace[.]

-JCNI

Absolutely one of my favorite poems. Enjoy[.]

CLOCKWATCHING

she holds

gold plate

chain links

attached

to the left ventricle

of my heart

which she keeps

tucked close

in her vest pocket

and pulls out

at regular intervals

to read the time

between us

and calls me

somewhere around

noon

and again

near sunset

though my

digital disposition

wishes her analog

timekeeper

would stop ticking

and hold a moment

frozen

still in time

like a picture

frame

where i can

watch the proof

of what

we might have

developed into

but perhaps

if the blood

in my pulse

did not beat

for her

it would beat

for no one

again forever

and what use

is a pocket watch

which no longer knows

the time?

                                                                                                                -Michael J. Strode

I roam about in search of something new. Albeit expensive, this nomadic lifestyle has become my addiction. Everything about a new city is intoxicating: its terrain, architecture, residents, redolence, pulchritude…. I explore each crevice, study its natives, taste its air, and stomach all of its bureaucratic bullshit.  Again, I’m addicted. My neocortex has failed me, and my hippocampus has developed a thirst of which cannot be satisfied. What in the entire fuck am I searching for? Of course we’ve all roamed mother earth before, and we’re bound to roam again, yet before I end up as a camel carrying terrorists across a middle eastern desert next life time, I want to live. Inquisitive folk always ask me “why do you move around so much?” The only logistical answer I can provide is that I am unapologetically a nomad, and I’m addicted to searching for something I’m most confident I’ll never find. More candidly, life is a motherfucker, and in the midst of all its bullshit, I often find myself escaping to something new……quite frequently and in haste.

-JCNI